Thursday, June 29, 2017

Immigration Hawks Who Supported Trump Fear He Will Abandon Promise To End ‘Dreamer’ Amnesty

... And he's giving them good reasons to fear:

Groups that want a tougher approach to illegal immigration are worried that President Donald Trump will renege on one of his signature policy promises: ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty program.

During the presidential campaign, Trump vowed to “immediately terminate” the DACA program, which former President Barack Obama created in 2012 to give illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors a two-year period of deferred action on deportation and access to work permits.

Five months into his presidency, Trump has not moved to cancel DACA protections, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced earlier in June the policies would remain in place for an indefinite period of time. That inaction has convinced many immigration groups that the Trump administration has no intention of eliminating the program.

“If the president had decided to end DACA, it would have happened. I don’t know what they are waiting for. He promised to end DACA,” Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, told the Washington Examiner.

“Once you say something is illegal and unconstitutional, you can’t just keep doing it” she said.

As a candidate, Trump ripped DACA as an illegal “amnesty” and said he would discontinue the program. To the dismay of immigration hawks, the president has since softened his rhetoric on DACA recipients — commonly known as ‘Dreamers’ — and DHS continues to process DACA applications as it had under the Obama administration.

Immigration authorities granted 107,524 DACA renewals and processed 17,275 new applications from January to March, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. About 70 percent of those cases were approved under Trump’s watch.